I offer here the second and final part of my piece on the Menendez murders. (Click here to read the first part.)

DOUBLE FAULT: Tennis, Murder, and the Menendez Brothers, Part II (2006)

...

When Joyce Sr. returned to his hotel room, he called Randy Wright, Billy Wright's father, back in Beverly Hills. "You saw Erik?" Wright asked with alarm. After explaining the news of the previous week, Wright advised Joyce Sr. to avoid Erik. Neither he nor Michael saw Erik again.

Several weeks later, Michael took a phone call from Erik. He asked whether Michael wanted to practice. Michael dropped the receiver and asked his parents what to do. They told him to make up an excuse. Michael picked up the phone, but Erik had hung up. He never called again.

Michael's father figured it had probably been the Mafia who had killed Jose and Kitty Menendez. He didn't want Michael to play with Erik; he worried Erik might be the next target.

In the year between the two Menendez trials, Les Zoeller, the head detective on the case, visited the Joyces to ask questions about the Menendezes and tennis.

Zoeller had quickly come to suspect the brothers. He got his first inkling the very night of the murders. While the policemen worked the crime scene, the brothers asked whether they could go back inside the house. Lyle said he wanted to retrieve his tennis racquets. He had left them in the den-the murder room. "A light bulb went off," Zoeller recalls.

After the first trial, Zoeller bumped into Randy Wright at a Beverly Hills lunch spot. Wright was a former assistant district attorney and knew many policemen. Wright told Zoeller that he had seen the brothers the day after the murders. They had asked for his help executing their parents' will. They had asked Wright's wife, Claire, whether she knew anyone who could crack into their parents' computer. They had even brought their parents' safe to the Wrights' house to see if there was a will inside. Wright had not been called to testify at the first trial.

Wright suggested that Zoeller investigate the Menendezes' tennis history. Zoeller had already been looking into it. When the brothers were young, Jose demanded that they pick one sport in which to excel, and he recommended that it be an individual pursuit. By the time Lyle was twelve and Erik nine, they had selected tennis. Their parents devoted their time and money toward their sons' games. While Jose oversaw their progress, Kitty managed their daily schedules.

Zoeller eventually developed a theory of how the brothers conspired to kill their parents. Lyle was the leader but failed to convince his younger brother - until Erik split with their father over his use of illegal coaching signals. Erik was playing a tournament in the South that summer. He wanted to compete without his father's help and demanded that his father not use signals. He lost badly. Jose was furious. The loss proved that Erik needed him.

"That," Zoeller says, "was the time Lyle got a hold of him."

Of all my hitting partners, I enjoyed practicing with Billy Wright the most. He never made ball calls, lost his temper, or resented losing. We played on his grandmother's court in Beverly Hills.

I attributed his character to his father. As tennis parents went, Randy was an angel. Sure, I had seen him make biting comments about Billy's game. But they were always funny and consistent with his chatty, cynical personality.

I envied Billy for his father. Randy once told me that Claire had come to watch one of Billy's matches, and after Billy lost, she began upbraiding him for it. Randy decided to ban her from his matches for a time. When I heard the story, I wished my father had done the same to my mother.

Randy convinced me even before their arrests that the Menendez brothers had killed their parents. The murders had occurred just as I was settling into my freshman dorm at Berkeley, where I played tennis. Like the Mendendezes, my parents had all but demanded that I go to U.C.L.A., across the street from their house, so that they could keep tabs on me. But my older sister, who had gone to Berkeley, talked them out of it.

I was visiting home for winter break and called Billy to hit some balls. Later, we met up with his father. I was eager to ask him about the murders.

Randy told me that the day they came over after the murders was the first time he had met Lyle. "The look in his eyes was the devil," he said. Lyle did most of the talking. He coolly peppered Randy with probate questions. At one point, Lyle wanted to know whether Randy had friends in the Beverly Hills Police Department. Randy said he did. Lyle asked permission to go outside and talk to his brother in private.

"Who could possibly ask that question?" Wright told me.

But no one believed Randy Wright. Not my parents. Not the Joyces. Not his son, or his wife. No, it was just Randy being his cynical self.

Wright dismissed all the reasons for which people doubted the brothers' guilt: "Kill their mother?" his wife objected. But it was the only way to get to the money, Randy said.

Beverly Hills had never seen such a crime, people said. It was inconceivable for tennis players to murder their parents. But rich parents "can contribute to craziness," Wright answered. And, remember, Jose was a tyrant.

Like Zoeller, Wright believes Lyle was the instigator. He still feels sorry for Erik.

"He was a sensitive kid," Wright says. "He never complained to me about his dad. If Erik hadn't been such a wimp, ironically enough, they might have gotten away with it." Erik's taped confession to psychiatrist Dr. Jerome Oziel, after succumbing to guilt and self-loathing, eventually led to their conviction.

Why is it, then, that Wright was the only one who could deduce and accept the truth of what happened?

"You know how many people live in denial?" Wright asked. "My best trait is, I look myself in the mirror and I give myself answers I don't want to hear."

[Next post ... A Conspiracy Theory to End All Conspiracy Theories: How Cass Sunstein Plans To Ruin the Market for JFK Assassination Books]